‘Always outsiders, always men, always white’: how women are changing the narrative of wildlife film-making

When Fiona Tande started in Kenya’s film industry after working in conservation, she was disappointed to find it laced with the same pervasive racism she had seen throughout her career.
In her experience, both sectors on the continent were dominated by white men, and the only people who looked like her usually worked as cooks or guides. Even the smallest roles in production were usually filled by someone from the global north.
“There’s that mindset that we won’t deliver because we’re Africans,” says Tande, 37. “It has been such a slap in the face because I really had faith in the film industry. There is still a lot of rampant and maybe closeted racism.”
As a result, people have been “disenfranchised from wildlife”, she says, and rarely consider careers in either field because it is “seared in our minds that these are not spaces for us to speak”.
After completing a film course in South Africa then working as a camera assistant and directing a short documentary, Tande decided to do something about the situation. In 2020, she set up Pridelands Films, a Kenya-based wildlife film company, to link foreign crews with film-makers already in the country. To celebrate and recognise the work being done on the continent, Tande then started the Pridelands Wildlife film festival (PWFF) in 2022.
She has started to see change. “A lot of people are coming up in this space and really doing an incredible job despite the lack of belief in local talent,” she says. “There is a lot more interest in telling stories about wild Africa from our perspectives.”
Since launching PWFF, she has observed an increase in submissions, from about four in the first year, to 15 the following year, and nearly doubled as many again this year. While few women are involved in the technical aspects of film-making, some are exploring roles in camera operation, drone piloting and underwater cinematography. More than 10 are excelling in writing, directing and producing, says Tande.
This year, about 100 film-makers from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa attended PWFF. There were masterclasses on how to find funding and monetise content on social media, as well as discussions around using AI as a tool for film, and how to thrive without depending on expensive equipment.
The growth in the number of African film-makers is important, Tande believes, because traditionally many films do not resonate with audiences in Africa. “You find that they are showcasing utopia, which is not the reality on the ground,” she says. “Having African storytellers [who have access to real life experiences and communities] is a way to bridge that gap.” Films should not just be about how lions exist in pristine savannahs, for example. “Our lives have changed,” she adds.
One film that exemplifies this is Living with Lions (Kuishi na simba), directed by the Tanzanian cinematographer, Erica Rugabandana. Tanzania is home to 40% of the world’s remaining wild lions, and is a leader in lion conservation. However, their survival is threatened: 60% live outside protected areas, where they are vulnerable to conflict with humans. The film follows a villager called Rugari and his family who live on the border of the Serengeti. During the dry season, hungry lions threaten their village and his livestock, his only source of income. “Our people were represented. The struggles they face with these lions were captured and solutions came from the people. It wasn’t about being lectured about how to live with lions,” says Tande.
“That’s what we are championing – stories that are reflective of our lives and struggles, and celebrate us instead of vilifying us.”
Tande recognises that female wildlife film-makers in Africa are still few and far between. It is not presented as a career choice at school, training is expensive and some women are put off by the technical aspects of camerawork.
Their participation is vital, however. “I feel like, as women, we have interesting ways of telling these stories,” says Tande. She cites the film, Portrait of a Ranger: Connie, by Jane Okoth, which follows Constance Mwandaa, the first female ranger in a vital wildlife corridor between two national parks in Kenya. Also, Ndossi, directed by Kristina Obame, which offers a glimpse into the Gabonese rainforest, blending folklore, personal testimony and immersive soundscapes. “These films, told through the female African gaze, are imbued with depth and emotion, breaking away from conventional storytelling,” says Tande.
She adds: “We are coming up slowly but surely. We just need support and trust from production companies and to be given a chance to contribute to the stories they want to tell so badly.
“Let us be a part of the process rather than just being a tick in the box of diversity and inclusion.”Sarah Johnson
Priscila Tapajowara mentions the river often as she describes her upbringing in Santarém, a rainforest city located where the Amazon and Tapajós rivers meet. “I grew up in close connection with the river, with nature. My childhood memories are of my family bathing in the river, doing laundry in the river, fishing, swimming,” says the Indigenous photographer and film-maker over a videocall, her face framed with colourful feather earrings.
Tapajowara, 31, is a member of the Tapajó people, one of 13 ethnic groups from the Lower Tapajós region in the Brazilian Amazon. It was while observing activists fighting to protect their sacred river from the rapidly expanding soya industry and plans for a hydroelectric complex that she became interested in photography. She saw it as a way of documenting her people’s life and struggles.
“People would come and take photos, records of our region … but they were always outsiders, always men, always white,” she says.
Encouraged by her father, Tapajowara started photographing surrounding Indigenous communities just over a decade ago. She borrowed equipment, learned from people passing through Santarém, and worked in a dental surgery to save up to buy her first camera, before eventually moving to São Paulo to study photography then audiovisual production.
It was there that she discovered cinematography. Her first job in film was working with the director Carlos Eduardo Magalhães on an acclaimed documentary about the fight of the Jaraguá Guarani Indigenous community on the outskirts of São Paulo. Her work since has focused on Indigenous experiences, from a series challenging stereotypes about contemporary Indigenous life to a short about Indigenous Venezuelans in Brazil.
But what Tapajowara most enjoys is telling the stories she first heard from her elders about the spirits that inhabit the trees and rivers, and forest-dwelling people’s relationship to them.
“I don’t want my films to just be about our struggle and activism. I like to show the cosmovision, the knowledge and spiritual beliefs of the peoples of the Lower Tapajós,” she says.
“Our culture is also very important because if it weren’t for our ancestral knowledge passed down from generation to generation, our relationship with nature, our understanding that nature teaches us more than we can ever learn inside a classroom, then the forest wouldn’t be standing, the rivers wouldn’t be alive.
“We understand that nature is not something separate from us, we are a part of nature.”
This symbiosis is at the heart of Ãgawaraitá (2022), a four-part web series recounting forest dwellers’ encounters with trees, waterways and the spirits within them. The title is Nheengatu for “enchanted beings” – the name given to the spiritual entities that guard the rainforest.
Tapajowara hopes to direct a second series of Ãgawaraitá and is already working on a feature-length film that will also explore, through fiction, the forest’s supranatural beings.
Nowadays, however, much of her time is taken up with other work, notably the organisation of an Amazon film festival and running Mídia Indígena, a media collective that reports Indigenous news on social media. She also travels the country offering audiovisual courses to Indigenous peoples as well as other remote communities.
“I’ve understood that communication is a powerful tool, and we need to learn how to use it in a beneficial way … to tell our own stories and be protagonists of our own narratives,” she says, praising cinema’s ability to introduce its audiences to new worlds and cultures.
Although Tapajowara teaches people of all ages, she is particularly eager to encourage young Indigenous women to follow in her footsteps. “When I started, I don’t remember seeing many other [Indigenous] women. Now there are lots of girls making films. I want to pave the way for those girls to have an easier time than I did building a career in film.”Constance Malleret
“I was hooked,” says Rita Banerji, who is talking about her first camera, an old Agfa analogue camera given to her by her father, in her adolescence. “I did a lot of photography with that camera,” the acclaimed Indian conservation film-maker reminisces fondly.
Today, Banerji not only makes films, but is also the founder of Green Hub, a residential film-making fellowship programme in India. “That camera was my first point of contact [in the film-making journey],” she says.
After graduating, Banerji joined Riverbank Studios in New Delhi as a production assistant, before eventually returning to her first passion, learning camera work, as well as film editing and directing. “The process of film-making is so beautiful,” says Banerji, “I fell in love with this field, especially with making environment and wildlife films.”
During a decade at Riverbank, Banerji was involved in several award-winning films, including Shores of Silence (2000) which shed light on the slaughter of whale sharks by impoverished fishers in the state of Gujarat, west India. The documentary prompted the Indian government to accord the highest level of legal protection to whale sharks in 2001, on a par with the tiger.
It was through her work at Riverbank that Banerji developed a wider understanding of wildlife conservation. “We cannot talk of conservation without the community, we cannot talk of rural development or community wellbeing without protecting natural resources,” she says. “It’s all very deeply connected.”
In 2002, Banerji founded Dusty Foot Productions where she works with a like-minded team that understands the interconnectedness of wildlife conservation, community wellbeing and rural development. Their 2010 film The Wild Meat Trail, about the extent of hunting practices in north-east India at the time, has received several awards including the prestigious Wildscreen Panda, often referred to as the Green Oscar.
Banerji founded Green Hub in partnership with North East Network, a women’s rights organisation, in 2015, with the aim of creating a platform for young people in conservation. It trains Indigenous and rural Indian youths in environmental and wildlife film-making, and has grown to cover eight states in the north-east as well as central and north-west India.
“Some of these youth have never been to school or touched a camera or computer,” says Banerji.
Each student receives three months of technical training in the classroom, followed by 10 months in the field working on a specific wildlife or environmental issue. To date, Green Hub has trained more than 250 young people – more than a third of whom are women.
“The camera makes a big difference to [women’s] confidence,” says Banerji. While some female students initially faced mixed reactions in their villages, many are now valued by their communities for their work, with some making films about the women who live there.
“Video is the medium but what we’re trying to do at Green Hub is to create a network of people, working on the ground in conservation,” says Banerji. “That is what will finally make an impact.”
Banerji was chosen as an Ashoka Fellow in 2019 in recognition of her work in inspiring conservation action and social change. Her message to aspiring film-makers is simple: “It [a career in film-making] takes time, it takes patience, but there are a lot of opportunities now.
“If one wants to pursue it, one needs to be persistent and not give up.”Anne Pinto-Rodrigues